Page 22 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

was afraid.
—I didn’t mean to. Sure you won’t?
His father had told him, whatever he did, never to peach
on a fellow. He shook his head and answered no and felt
glad.
Wells said:
—I didn’t mean to, honour bright. It was only for cod.
I’m sorry.
The face and the voice went away. Sorry because he was
afraid. Afraid that it was some disease. Canker was a disease
of plants and cancer one of animals: or another different.
That was a long time ago then out on the playgrounds in the
evening light, creeping from point to point on the fringe of
his line, a heavy bird flying low through the grey light. Le-
icester Abbey lit up. Wolsey died there. The abbots buried
him themselves.
It was not Wells’s face, it was the prefect’s. He was not
foxing. No, no: he was sick really. He was not foxing. And he
felt the prefect’s hand on his forehead; and he felt his fore-
head warm and damp against the prefect’s cold damp hand.
That was the way a rat felt, slimy and damp and cold. Every
rat had two eyes to look out of. Sleek slimy coats, little little
feet tucked up to jump, black slimy eyes to look out of. They
could understand how to jump. But the minds of rats could
not understand trigonometry. When they were dead they
lay on their sides. Their coats dried then. They were only
dead things.
The prefect was there again and it was his voice that was
saying that he was to get up, that Father Minister had said

22 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man